224 IN THE OLD WEST 



rash enough to stay them, were, any day you will, 

 carried in the rifle-barrels of these stout fellows; 

 who, in all the proud consciousness of their phys- 

 ical qualities, neither thought, nor cared to think, 

 of future perils; and rode merrily on their way, 

 rejoicing in the dangers they must necessarily 

 meet. Never a more daring band crossed the 

 mountains ; a more than ordinary want of caution 

 characterized their march, and dangers were reck- 

 lessly and needlessly invited, which even the older 

 and more cold-blooded mountaineers seemed not to 

 care to avoid. They had, each and all, many a 

 debt to pay the marauding Indians. Grudges for 

 many privations, for wounds and loss of com- 

 rades, rankled in their breasts; and not one but 

 had suffered more or less in property and person 

 at the hands of the savages, within a few short 

 months. Threats of vengeance on every Redskin 

 they met were loud and deep; and the wild war- 

 songs round their nightly camp-fires, and gro- 

 tesque scalp-dances, borrowed from the Indians, 

 proved to the initiated that they were, one and all, 

 " half-froze for hair." Soon after Killbuck and 

 La Bonte joined them, they one day suddenly sur- 

 prised a band of twenty Sioux, scattered on a 

 small prairie, and butchering some buffalo they 

 had just killed. Before they could escape, the 

 whites were upon them with loud shouts, and in 

 three minutes the scalps of eleven were dangling 

 from their saddle-horns. 



